


And am I born to die

by peonies



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Pre-Series, Teen Angst, Young Winchesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 08:44:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7260583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peonies/pseuds/peonies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The visions start when he’s fifteen, sleeping on a pullout couch in a motel room across from his father and brother with a knife under his pillow; or, what would young Sam think if he could see himself now?</p>
            </blockquote>





	And am I born to die

_Dean picks up the glass vial with Crowley’s blood (red, like rubies), and peers at it._

_“Well, one thing’s for sure, we only got one shot. This thing don’t reload.”_

_He doubts. “You think Crowley’s, uh…”_

_“Double-crossing us?”_

_A nod. “Yeah.”_

_“You gotta figure, who’s he want dead more? Us or Dick?”_

_“Depends on what Dick offered.” The stopper comes out of the vial._

_“Here we go.” The contents go into the wooden bowl. There’s no visible change, no smoke, no crack of thunder. Maybe the effect is triggered by a spoken formula. He feels uneasy in the absence of a sign. Most spells come with a kind of signal to indicate that they’ve been cast properly, but he’s not sure if he would call this a spell. An anointment, maybe?_

_“Okay. Um. So do we, uh—”_

_His brother shrugs, confusion evident on his face. “No magic words, nothin’. We just go.”_

_“All right, then.” There’s a sharpened bone that looks disturbingly like a human femur in another, larger bowl, and he carefully pours the solution over it. Again, no reaction. They wait even longer this time._

_“Where’s all the thunder and lightning?”_

_“Uh, maybe it worked?”_

_“Awesome.”_

* * *

 

He sits up in bed and for a moment he doesn’t know where he is. His heart beats rabbit-fast and his forehead and back are damp with cold sweat. He’s freezing.

Then he realizes that an air conditioning unit is blowing into his face, and it rattles a bit at steady intervals. Once he takes some deep breaths and calms his heartrate, does everything Dad tells him to if he wakes up somewhere strange, his eyes have adjusted to the darkness. It’s the inside of a motel room. He has the sheets kicked off the edge of the pullout and the pillow behind him has a hunting knife under it. Dean is asleep in the bed in front of him and Dad is one bed over, snoring lightly. Sucking in a few more calming breaths, he swings his legs over the side of the pullout, then staggers blindly to the bathroom, feeling the wall for the light switch and closing the door behind him.

It’s absurdly hot even for South Carolina, at least for the end of June. The air conditioning unit can only do so much against the oppressive heat. It’s a wet kind of heat, too, with the air so thick and humid that even the gnats seem to have trouble pushing through it, and everything shimmers at noon. He’s wondered idly once or twice whether the tires will melt if they keep going south and he’s been careful not to burn his hands on the car doors for the past week. They’ve been driving with the car windows down, but each of them stinks to high heaven anyway by the end of the day.

He fumbles at the taps and ducks his head under the swan-necked faucet, stooping a little bit. The ice-cold water numbs his scalp and face and runs into his eyes and stings. He stays there for a good minute, then pushes at the taps and towels his head dry. The cold lingers on his skin, and his damp hair is mostly flattened down, but he knows the humidity is going to make him miserable again in a few minutes. He lets the towel drop around his shoulders and can’t quite bring himself to go back into the bedroom, so he lowers the lid on the toilet and sits there, trying to cool his back and legs on the porcelain. He’s tall enough now so that the back of his head can thump back against the wall.

It felt so real. He knows it was just a dream, but it was so _like_ them that he’d had no trouble believing that he was apparently taller than Dean and that Dean looked like he was thirty-eight going on fifty and that they still wore thick jackets over flannel over t-shirts and ripped-up jeans and sturdy, mud-spattered boots. And he could feel the weight of the Taurus tucked into the back of his pants, the press of the knife in his boot, the slight weight of the rosary in his breast pocket. It was the same, except he was older and stronger and presumably wiser, so why. Why wasn’t he a thousand lightyears away from hunting. Why wasn’t he happy. Why was he still afraid. Why did he dream of _this_ future, a future that can’t possibly be his. Because he’s not going to be sitting in a motel bathroom in the middle of a hunt in three years; he’s going to be in college, he’s going to be maybe pre-law or pre-med; he can do that. He can do that. He cannot do _this._ Not for much longer. Certainly not forever. Every hunt wears him down a little more. His hand lingers on the gun now.

The porcelain is warm now and sweat is gathering at the back of his neck again. He hangs the towel up on one of the hooks, turns off the light switch, and leaves the bathroom. Dad’s still snoring. Dean has flipped onto his back and he’s probably going to start snoring soon, too, so even if he was planning on sleeping, it’s not going to happen. Instead of heading back to the pullout, he lifts the keycard from the nightstand between the beds, steps into his sneakers, and slips out of the room into the muggy June night, careful not to disturb the salt line at the threshhold.

Something like a pressure valve opens in his chest and he’s walking without thinking, hands pulling through his hair. Dad always chooses a first-floor room so they can make a quick escape if they need to, so it’s just a quick left turn and a few steps down to the parking lot. From the light of the street lamps he can see five cars – their black Chevy, a banged-up old Civic, a pickup with a dresser strapped into the bed, a two-door sedan with a dented hood, and a dusty green SUV in the far corner. He takes all of this in as easily and naturally as breathing, and it makes him want to clench his hands into fists and rip his hair out. The paranoia is second nature and it makes him cruel. There’s not even a breeze out here. The heat is almost unbearable. He walks faster, to the far side of the lot facing the two-lane road. Beyond that, there’s nothing but miles of pitch-black forest with God-knows-what lurking inside, ready to pounce and tear and sting and bite.

He faces the forest. Waits. Waits. _Come on, I’m here._ Wendigo, black dog, banshee, doesn’t matter. He feels like he could rip anything apart with his bare hands, and he’s going to explode, he’s going to scream, he’s going to run off to the highway and hitchhike to the nearest city, and he’s never, ever going to come back to this. He’s never going to lie awake at night seeing death in every shadow in the room, creeping behind his eyelids, feeling it curled up deep inside his chest. Because what else could that black despair be? If he didn’t have to stare it in the face every single day and sleep with it under his pillow and find it down the barrel of every gun they owned and in the paint job of their fucking car, maybe it wouldn’t have wormed its way under his skin and screwed him up so bad, and maybe if he runs now it won’t be too late to make it out alive. It’s harder and harder to make friends at school now. He’s going to be a junior next year and he’s not going to know anyone better than he knows the balance of a throwing knife, but he can’t open his mouth to ask to stay for two whole semesters unless for some reason a single hunt takes Dad and Dean combined eight months to finish because it’s unfair to Dean and it’s unfair to Dad and it’s unfair to everyone who’s going to die between now and next June just because Sam wants to go to college.

His hair sticks to his forehead and his neck and his shirt sticks to his chest and the elastic waistband of his shorts scratches his skin.

“Fuck,” he whispers to the dark forest, hands clasped on top of his head. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

There’s a bruise on his forearm from sparring with Dean this morning before the ride from Pennsylvania, and it twinges. Dean’s really good at hunting. He’s good at getting the job done, he’s good at charming his way around the rules, he’s good at flirting with girls and getting piss-drunk and still managing to stumble back to the motel at a relatively reasonable hour, he’s good at throwing knives and spears and and handling guns and staying on his feet and finding the weak spot of the monthly monster and dispatching it and clapping Sam on the back and saying _hey, good job,_ and he really just wants to break something and break it loud, _God dammit, Dean._

The dream felt like his future. He imagines not going to college, just hunting with his dad and his brother, and dying. Always dying, quick and quiet or long and slow and loud, alone or with Dean or Dad or both, or maybe they’re dead already and he’s the last one, with some shadow ripping his intestines out through his back or choking him until his neck snaps. He’s fifteen. Sometimes he can’t see beyond sixteen or seventeen. That’s what college is for. College is four years for a Bachelor’s, five years for a Master’s, then a job, or maybe grad school and eventually a doctorate. That’s how it’s supposed to work: structure, planning years ahead, planning to have a future. And no one reassures him that he’ll have a future because there _is_ no future in the hunting business. It’s a sprint to the finish line, straight into the jaws of death. Dean tells him that Dad will keep them safe, that _he’ll_ keep them safe, but he’s seen both of them laid low with gunshots and stab wounds and deep gouges in their flesh welling with bright blood, had to accompany them through concussions and ER visits and broken bones and bruised guts, and they’ve had to pull him back from the brink of death more than a few times over the last couple of years. He’s scared shitless and he’s got every right to be, and somehow that makes it worse.

His hands slide down to rest on the back of his neck, and he sits down the crumbling parking block behind him, resting his elbows on his knees. The world is so big and hopeless right now that he feels like a gust of wind could send him tumbling across the countryside like a dandelion seed. And he wants it, wants to be anywhere else but here, but no wind comes. The air is still and hot and damp, and sweat drenches every inch of his skin.

Twenty years from now he’ll be pouring blood over a bone for a spell, he’ll be on a hunt with Dean, he’ll be wearing a hunter’s clothes, if his dream is right. He hopes he’ll be gone by then and it won’t come true. Gone and dead or just gone, he doesn’t care. Just some way that won’t make Dean unhappy, because he doesn’t want Dean to be unhappy, even though Dean doesn’t understand why he wants to leave. He wants to take his brother by the shoulders and turn him around, make him look at the world of the living, and maybe then he’ll see that their lives are worth so much more than – _saving people,_ he corrects himself before he thinks something else. Saving people. Killing monsters. The world needs hunters and Dad is just making sure it’ll have two more by the time he turns eighteen. Dad is responsibility. He is justice and knowledge and righteous anger, and nothing is ever enough. Not fast enough, not strong enough, not smart enough – not in the right ways. It’s because their lives are on the line with this job, because they’re handling more weapons than the average grown American citizen ever will, because of _Mom,_ and he can’t leave and he can’t die because Dad and Dean laugh with him over burgers and take care of him when he’s sick and stitch up his wounds and make sure he doesn’t go hungry. Because they love him and can’t bear to see him go. Because he loves them and wants to keep them safe.

He wonders if he goes back to sleep right now whether he could dream of walking at his college graduation with full honors and Dad and Dean watching and feel _happy,_ but his dreams of late have not been much for wish-fulfillment. A bead of sweat drips into his eyelashes and he wipes it away with the heel of his palm.

 _This is not going to last,_ he tells himself. _Someday you’ll never have to fight monsters again if you don’t want to._ And he wants it so fiercely that he thinks the bright need might blow up inside him and he’ll light up like a firecracker, _pow!_ vaulting into the sky. Someday he’s going to do something to help people without killing anything, and he’s going to prove that he can get beyond the feeling of death crawling in his body and his acquired paranoia and destructive reflexes. Someday his hand won’t itch for a gun when he’s scared. He wants to take notes with a nice pen and listen to the grate of chalk on the blackboard and he wants to _go._

He could run. Right now, down the highway, into the woods. Go off the grid for a while then pop into a small town under an alias, build a new life as anyone but Sam Winchester. He’d never have to touch a gun again. But no matter how much he dreams, he can’t _fantasize,_ because it’ll make going back to shooting things and moving from place to place that much harder. Sometimes he wants to get down on his knees and beg Dad to let him stay in one place so he can learn for real, so he can take AP classes and attend review sessions and find a tutor for the subjects he’s not so good at. But there are lives that need saving, and Dad loves him and can’t leave him behind not knowing what will happen to him, and if he stayed and they left, every single one of them would break under the uncertainty. And he has, if nothing else, his pride, so he won’t and never will beg for anything.

Sometimes he thinks that in three years he might not care anymore, and that’s when he’ll be able to leave them. In three years, he won’t feel this tightness on his shoulders and in his chest, or this bruise on his forearm, or the itch of scar tissue on the outside of his thigh. He’s going to be done.

_Don’t think about it. You’ll be done. Three years. You can do three years._

Whether he actually can or can’t doesn’t matter, as long as he has the thought to hold onto.

The door to their room – because it won’t be any other room at this time of night – opens and closes, and he lets his hands fall in front of him, and he flips the keycard between his fingers like it’s a playing card. He can tell from the footsteps that it’s Dean, the steady thump of steps with a tiny hitch because he still favors his left foot after busting it a few weeks ago. The memory of it makes him shudder. Who’s going to take care of Dean when he goes to college? He doesn’t trust Dad to see all of the danger. And he can’t go if Dad won’t take care of Dean right, because if he gets hurt and _dies_ and Sam isn’t there he might as well have just taken the fucking Glock out of the trunk and shot him right in the head himself.

“Sam? Sammy?” The call echoes across the parking lot and he bites his lip, flips the keycard through his fingers. He is going to drown in the humidity and Dean is too and no one will ever find them.

“Sam?” The footsteps grow closer and he can hear the crunch of loose asphalt beneath Dean’s boots. They stop right behind him and he can hear Dean’s shirt rustling as he crouches down next to him, then feels the weight of his hand on his shoulder, uncomfortably hot and sweaty. “Dude, why are you out here?”

He shrugs. Dean’s hand slips off his shoulder and his brother sighs and he feels guilty, stuffs _college_ and _fear_ deep down inside his brain until he can’t hear either thought anymore, and all he thinks of is what they’re going to eat tomorrow for breakfast and if the hotel has a complimentary one.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “It was just stuffy inside.”

“Like it’s any less stuffy out here?” He can hear Dean raising his eyebrows. “Dude, you could drown out here and no one would ever find you.”

They stay there for a moment. Dean doesn’t push. That’s one of the great things about Dean, he thinks. He knows when to pry and when not to, knows when it’s about not wanting to hunt and when it’s about sheer moodiness and natural stubbornness. He picks his fights and neither of them will ever win the one about hunting, so Dean. Doesn’t. Pry. No matter how much Sam wants him, or anyone, to ask. Just ask, and _listen._

“Come on,” he says softly. “Let’s go back inside. And you should shower again unless you want to wake up in a swimming pool of your own grossness.”

He doesn’t respond at first, stares at the keycard in his hand, rams back the panic that threatens to burst through, shouting over it that he loves his family even when he forgets to brace for the kick of the shotgun and Dad yells at him, even when he and Dean yell at each other until they’re both red in the face with veins popping, even though staying means going back into the darkness over and over again until every part of him is a killer.

Dean leads the way back to the motel room and he stumbles behind him, shuffles into the bathroom, shucks his clothes and does a quick rinse, towels off, gropes for new clothes in the darkness, and lies down on the pullout again. His brother is already asleep. He stares at the ceiling until he falls asleep, too, and doesn’t dream of the future, or anything at all, just drifts in the pitch-black peace of unconsciousness.

He wakes up to pale sunlight the next morning, and the acrid smell of motel coffee fills his nose, and he thinks, _Do it again and again and again. Three years. Keep going._ Dean gives him a look but he ignores it and goes to brush his gritted teeth. The bruise on his forearm has a green ring around it.

They leave an hour later, heading west on an empty road.

**Author's Note:**

> Found this in my WIP folder a few days ago and brushed it up a bit. It's almost four years old, but still made me a little sad, so I thought I'd share it. Heavily influenced by [Lise](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/profile)'s [Beneath the Trees](http://archiveofourown.org/series/18547) 'verse, which I read on FFNet way back when; if you're into distressing what-if AUs that make you glad for canon, head over there. 
> 
> Title taken from the [hymn of the same name](http://www.hymnary.org/text/and_am_i_born_to_die), written by good old Charlie Wesley.


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